Spinning Toward Home
by stemware
Summary: Ten-year old Harry accidentally finds himself in a new neighborhood the summer before Hogwarts. Mentor/guardian fic.
1. The Roundabout to Nowhere

**Disclaimer: No money, no problems.**

**A/N: I haven't written anything in this universe for years, but I can't stop thinking about these characters, so this story will definitely get finished. This story **_**might**_** have a scene or two containing corporal punishment - none of the adults in Harry's life are coming out with parenting books anytime soon. As always, thank you to anyone who is reading, and please be kind to these amateur efforts.**

* * *

Harry wrinkled his nose, frowning. From the dusty hallways of Aunt Marge's large country house, the photos of her prize bulldogs scowled back at him from their rhinestone-bedazzled frames.

In truth, Harry was still surprised that Aunt Marge had taken him in for the summer while the elder Dursleys were away. He remembered well the evening from a couple of months ago: Aunt Petunia squealing in her high voice about a three-month long cruise for two that she had won in the lottery, and Aunt Marge's purple face after four glasses of wine, smiling vindictively.

Harry pushed away a slobbering pup that had followed him down the hallway. He was sure that Aunt Marge had agreed only for the pleasure of knocking Harry around the house and criticizing him.

The boy sighed. In the three days he'd lived at the country estate, Aunt Marge had expressed nothing but disgust every time she'd come near him. Harry suspected that the fun of Harry-baiting that she had imagined in a drunken haze had grown old much sooner than Aunt Marge had expected.

Adults, Harry decided, were ridiculous. When he was an adult, he would have a nice, spacious cottage, with open windows and treacle tart for dinner every night. No dogs allowed. Sports matches or adventure films on the telly at night, and none of the programmes Aunt Marge insisted on watching which consisted of blonde parishioners smashing their lips together to dramatic music and then whining about their large inheritances to each other. Why anyone who had a large inheritance would waste it on buying fancy things for _girls_, Harry had never understood. And, he would live in his house all by himself, with no Dursleys - not that he'd ever deserve to have real friends or family, but at the least no one that disliked him would be allowed inside, and -

** "**Boy."

Torn out of his reverie, Harry heard the telltale sound of a herd of baby elephants trampling down the stairs, and instinctively curled in on himself.

"You, boy. What are you doing, lurking about this hallway?" Aunt Marge's small eyes glistened unpleasantly.

"Nothing, Aunt Marge." Harry looked down, his voice sounding small and soft to his own ears. He threaded his thumbs through the hem of his overly large t-shirt, another hand-me-down from Dudley.

"I can see that much. Good-for-nothing just like your parents, can't even find something useful to do -"

The woman - only a bit taller than Harry, but much wider than him in girth, pointed a finger in the boy's face. Harry hated the chipped red nail polish she was wearing. _Hated it_.

"You, boy, are getting in the way of these animals. You're not worth a toe of these dogs, and don't you forget it -"

Harry's shoulders slumped further forward. Looking up through his fringe, though, he thought she seemed in a good mood today, or at least not the mood she had been in after a few glasses of scotch yesterday. Last night had been a scramble of terror, after Aunt Marge had slapped Harry round the head for trying to get a glass of water at night. He'd run upstairs to his closet of a bedroom, and Aunt Marge had chased him, eventually locking him in until Dudley had walked in in the morning to taunt Harry. Harry's ears had rung from the slap until he'd gone to sleep.

Harry rubbed the side of his head absent-mindedly, although the pain was by now long gone. "I won't, Aunt Marge," he said, very quietly.

For a minute, his so-called aunt looked down at him suspiciously, then pushed him in the direction of the front door. "Alright, get out of the house. And don't let me catch your scent around here until after lunch, or -"

But Harry was already moving down the hallway. For the past three days, he'd not been let out of the house, his aunt preferring load him down with chores. She had criticized his every move, breathed down his neck, and made him repeat simple tasks like washing the dishes until his fingers were sore and aching from scrubbing. If Aunt Marge had finally gotten fed up with her pastime of making Harry miserable, Harry was happy to get out of the way.

* * *

Wandering alone and openly gaping at the posh, gargantuan-sized houses on Aunt Marge's street, the ten-year old kicked a small grey rock down the street as if it was a football.

Harry had never really played football much - Dudley would never let him play with the other kids at recess - but he thought he might be good at it. The child pretended to shoot the ball toward an imaginary net, and the rock bounced away in a straight line. Harry raised his arms victoriously. "He shoots, he scores!" the ten-year old told no one in particular, lowering the pitch of his voice to sound like an adult sports commentator.

As Harry usually did, when he indulged in this particular fantasy, he imagined his dad cheering for him in the stands, and his mum smiling at him beside him. His dad would have green eyes just like his, and his mum would have messy hair like his and maybe even glasses - or maybe his mum would be the one with green eyes and his dad would be the one with the messy hair. Maybe they would have been excited to see him play, and his dad would have ruffled his hair afterward like Harry had sometimes seen Aunt Vernon do to Dudley.

The child felt something inside him deflate, as if his lungs were balloons popped by a needle, and he sighed and angrily kicked the rock away into the street. Spending a few days with Aunt Marge had taken all of the fun out of fantasizing about his parents.

If his parents were anything like what the Dursleys said, maybe they wouldn't have cared about Harry either. Maybe he was just fundamentally unlikable, Harry decided, indulging in self-pity. Maybe no one would _ever_ care what he did. Harry scraped his shoes on the pavement, and walked on, dragging his feet and feeling quite sorry for himself.

* * *

"Wow," Harry breathed out. After thirty minutes of dragging his feet past boring old country houses, he'd finally found something exciting. _A playground_. And an empty playground, at that. Harry guessed that it was too overcast of a day for people to take their children out. Harry didn't have a sweater or a raincoat on, but he didn't care - it wasn't raining yet anyways, and he had the playground all to himself_._ "Super!" the boy whispered to himself. After three days of being stuck in a house, the dilapidated playground looked like an adventure course.

Harry first tried out the swings. Once the repetitive movement made his stomach start to flip over, he leaped off onto the woodchips. Deciding that the slide was way too babyish to play on, he made his way to his all time favorite - the climbing frame. And today, he didn't even have to share! Swinging through air as if he was a monkey flying through the tree branches, Harry traveled back and forth on the bars until his palms were pink and stinging. Deciding to take a break, Harry turned to the final piece of playground equipment - the playground roundabout, a flat white disk with blue handles.

It was a rusty thing, the paint half scraped off, but as Harry pushed off, the flat metal disk still spun and accelerated. Harry pushed with his foot until the roundabout was spinning faster and faster, the world blurring about at sickening speed. Quite dizzy, Harry knelt down, shutting his eyes. For a second, the boy felt like he might sick up. He struggled to breathe out - and then as suddenly as it had come on, the dizziness passed as the roundabout began to slow down. Dragging his foot on the wood chips to further slow the spinning of the structure, Harry did a double take and nearly gasped. This was definitely not Aunt Marge's posh country village.

* * *

In his ten years, Harry had done weird things, things he couldn't explain to the Dursleys. There was that time that he'd turned a teacher's wig blue. That time when his hair had grown magically overnight after Aunt Petunia had butchered it. Even that time when he had ended up on the school roof after Dudley and his gang had been chasing him around the playground. This, though, was in a league of its own.

Yeah, so maybe he'd wanted to get away from Aunt Marge, but being alone on the streets by himself was going to be way worse. At least before, he'd had a place to sleep, and he could always sneak something to eat from her large and messy kitchen. Now, sitting down on the woodchips in this playground, Harry had no idea what to do.

He figured that he couldn't be _too _far from Aunt Marge's town, judging by how the sky was similarly overcast here. And yet. Here, the street was paved cobblestone and studded with trash, in sharp contrast to the freshly-cleaned concrete of the town where he had been. And the grim looking brick houses were much more foreboding than the posh estates that had surrounded the other playground.

Probably, the boy figured, he should ask someone for help, but Aunt Petunia had always told him never-ever to talk to strangers. And who would believe that he'd just somehow ended up here by taking a spin on a playground roundabout? Harry wrapped his arms around his knees and rested his cheek on his knee. Maybe he would just stay on this playground forever.

A stray-looking cat rubbed against Harry's knees. Petting it between the ears, the child looked down at the giant grey monster, its fur sprayed with dirt. Its eyes, Harry saw, were giant and yellow as light bulbs, and its face had a distinctly squished look to it. It purred quietly when Harry scratched it behind the ears. "You, cat, are the ugliest cat I've ever seen," Harry told it, continuing to scratch its head. "No wonder you're no one's pet." The cat swished its bushy tail, batting a few woodchips out of the way.

"You're a good cat, though," Harry told it. "I like you." The cat had rolled over on its back, looking up at him contentedly. Harry's lips curled up a bit. If the cat was surviving out here, maybe he could too.

After a minute of petting, though, the cat seemed to have had enough. Leaping off from where it had been sitting by Harry, the fluffy gray thing bounced away from the boy as if its legs were springs. "No, wait, you -"

Harry walked after it, not wanting to be alone on the strange new street. The boy followed it halfway down the road, until the cat suddenly slowed down. Looking up, Harry noticed a grimy street sign. "Spinner's End," Harry read. At least now, he knew where he was… Harry smirked. Well, this certainly _was_ where the spinning roundabout had left him. He had no time to linger on that thought, though, as the cat had sprung off the street, up and over the fence of a stranger's garden.

"No, kitty, I can't follow you there," he tried to whisper to it. The cat meowed back, tauntingly, and swished its tail at him. It was a dare if ten-year old Harry had ever seen one. And he'd never been one to back down from a dare. And so, putting a foot into the metal grating, Harry began to climb up the metal links to the top of the fence.

Harry was good at climbing up. He really was. What he wasn't so good at, he discovered, was getting down. As soon as he had gotten both of his feet over the top of the fence, his hands had slipped on the metal and he landed in the garden, falling over and skidding forward on his knees.

"Ow…" The cat had wondered back over to him, but Harry no longer cared about it. Pulling away from the ground, Harry looked down at the droplets of blood making their way down his leg from his totally torn up knees. "Yuck…" It really stung. "Look what you made me do!" he told the animal. The boy tried to wipe away the blood dripping on his leg, but he only succeeded in smearing it around and getting more dirt on his shins. This day was just getting worse and worse. And how was he ever going to get out of the garden? This had been the worst idea ever.

Harry heard the sound of footsteps behind him. The cat, who had been walking around Harry's legs, scampered away traitorously back over the fence. His stomach fluttering, Harry wrapped his arms around himself and, very slowly, turned around to face whoever had just come out of the house.


	2. The Man in the Garden

Previously: _His stomach fluttering, Harry wrapped his arms around himself and, very slowly, turned around to face whoever had just come out of the house._

Harry looked up through his fringe at the face of the tall man standing in front of him, then quickly dropped his gaze to the man's worn-out looking black boots. This man didn't just look angry, thought Harry. No, from the tightly crossed arms, to the steely look in his eyes, the man looked _irate_.

"So, are you a little thief, or are you merely an idiot, trampling through my garden?" barked out the man in black.

Instinctively, Harry took a step back. The man, he noticed, was not yelling at or slapping Harry to a cupboard like his relatives might have done in this situation, but the man's voice was low, and threatening. Harry raised his head back up to meet the man's eyes, summoning every bit of his courage.

"I would never steal," the boy told the man quietly, but emphatically. "Never." Harry self-consciously brushed his fringe to the side, away from his eyes, and the man's eyes widened, then quickly narrowed in a hateful look. Oh no, Harry thought quickly. He hoped the man didn't think he was lying…. "I swear, sir! I wouldn't!" Harry tried again, a frantic edge to his voice.

"Quiet, Potter," the man spat out, and this time Harry was the one that did a double take.

"Do I know you?" the boy all but stammered out, taking another step backward. Harry knew he was being rude, but he was too confused to care.

"I thought I told you to be quiet, Potter," the man ground out through his teeth. Abandoning his line of questioning, Harry bit down on his lip, as if to stop any words from accidentally slipping out.

But the man continued speaking. "Of course I know who you are. Now, what in the world, Potter, are you doing here?" He looked down at the boy, who was studiously examining his shoelaces, and biting his bottom lip white. "Potter! Look at me when you're spoken to, and answer me right this minute."

Harry looked up at the man's eyebrows, which were still knit together in an angry, angry expression. The boy gulped. "Um… I was on a playground in my Aunt Marge's town. It's called Medway." Harry looked up at the man momentarily, but the man's face had remained stony and impassive. "Well, I was spinning on the roundabout, and then somehow…" Harry shrugged and ducked his head back down. He knew full well that the man would never believe him if he tried to explain how the roundabout had spat him out in a different town. Even Harry had a hard time believing himself.

"Potter!" Harry winced at the harsh tone. "Shrugging is not acceptable. Explain how you got from the roundabout a couple of blocks away to this garden, then."

Harry glanced up, surprised that the man had not asked him how he'd gotten from one town to the next. Despite the man's angry voice, he noticed, the man's eyes looked marginally less angry, although still stern.

"I was following a cat, and then it jumped into this garden so I… Climbed over the fence…" Harry clamped down his lips as the man's eyes again narrowed.

"And do you think that's an acceptable way to behave, dunderheaded child? I swear… As if you were raised by trolls…"

Harry's stomach dropped with guilt. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that." The boy wrapped his arms around himself again. Softly, he noted, "And Aunt Petunia says trolls aren't real anyway."

The man's voice was laced with irony this time. "Yes, and neither are boys who disappear in one town and appear in the next." Harry simply shrugged again, risking the man's wrath, and the man's eyes looked cold and calculating. "Harry Potter. Tell me everything you know about yourself, fast."

Harry raised one of his shoulders to his ear, thinking. "I'm Harry Potter. I'm ten… My birthday is July 31st. I go to St. Gregory's Primary, but I'll be going to Stonewall High next year, and I live with my aunt and uncle at Number Four, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. My parents were good-for-nothings that died in a car crash. I like treacle tart, adventure stories, and also -"

"_Enough_." The man spun around, then looked back over his shoulder. "Potter, you will stand right here, and wait for me while I go into the house. If you run away on any more hare-brained adventures, I swear I will personally…"

The man didn't finish the threat, and Harry nodded emphatically. Not even thinking about disobeying, the boy quickly dropped to sit down on the ground, while the man quickly made his way back to the house.

* * *

The man was inside the house for a good long time. Long enough for Harry to get bored of tracing his name in the dirt with his finger, and move on to drawing fanciful pirate ships and giant sea-monsters in the same. Long enough for Harry to mentally berate the cat that had gotten him into this silly situation for abandoning him at his time of need.

And then, after _forever_ by Harry's standards and perhaps twenty minutes by a watch's count, the man finally came back out of the house, laden with two stopped flasks and a small jar.

"Harry Potter. Stretch out your legs." Harry obeyed, looking questioningly at the man who had crouched down next to him, and then at his own knees, which he had skinned in falling from the fence. Systematically, the man first cleaned the wounds with a handkerchief and some water from one of the flasks.

Then, the man unstopped the other flask, held down Harry's feet with his hand, and poured a few drops of the more opaque liquid over each of Harry's knees. Reflexively, Harry shut his eyes at the sting. "Ow." He opened his eyes to the man looking amused at him with questioning eyes. "It stings," he told him.

"Of course it does, idiot child, it's a disinfectant."

Harry furrowed his brows. "Why are you putting _that_ on? Aunt Petunia says you can just let scrapes and cuts like that heal on their own…" But the man merely rolled his eyes at him, and didn't answer, unscrewing the last small jar he had brought. This jar the man then preferred to hand over to Harry, telling him to "apply it liberally" to his knees.

Harry did so, and was amazed as the skin on his knees literally turned white and unblemished before his eyes. The sting too quickly disappeared and was replaced by the cool heaviness of the gel. "Wicked!" he quietly breathed out.

A few droplets of rain drummed into the ground next to him from the overcast grey sky, and the boy quickly screwed the jar of miracle-balm back and handed it back to the man, wondering why his relatives had never bothered to buy any. Perhaps, he thought, it was very expensive?

Harry wasn't quite sure how to thank the man, but the man preempted him. "What kind of an idiot child goes out on a rainy day dressed in just a t-shirt?"

Harry looked up at him, frowning. "Aunt Marge didn't tell me to put one on," he told the adult towering above him.

The man glowered. "Perhaps, at ten years old, she thought you'd know better."

Harry looked down instead of answering.

"Very well, Potter, get in the car." Harry gave him a questioning look. "Someone has to drive you back to Aunt Marge's house…"

Harry stood his ground, suddenly feeling foolishly brave. "I don't know how you know my last name, but my name is Harry, not Potter_." _He spit out the last name, in imitation of how the man pronounced it. "Also, my relatives say not to get into cars with strangers, and I don't even know your name."

_Where did that come from_, Harry wondered. He didn't think that the man would do anything bad if he did get into the car with him. Kidnapping murderers don't usually heal your knees first, or offer to take you home when you're already in their garden, he decided. He looked up through his fringe at the man.

The taller man's face had turned nasty, and for a second Harry considered backing away. But then, the angry look was replaced by a smirk.

"Very well, _Harry_. You are to call me Professor Snape." The man crouched down, leveling with the boy. "And now, you would do well to obey me and get into the car this second," he told the boy, his voice sounding very silky and dangerous.

Harry scrambled inside.


End file.
